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<blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 3495151" data-attributes="member: 32164">Over my years of gaming, I have come to the conclusion that any form of &quot;balance&quot; other than &quot;per encounter&quot; is a fantasy.Per encounter balance, implicit or explicit, is the only form of balance that means anything mechanically. And that's what we're talking about - mechanical (or game) balance. So called &quot;per day&quot; balancing just leads to artificially short &quot;days&quot; as characters stop adventuring at 10 or 11 in the morning. Some day. So in other words, in my experience, &quot;per day&quot; balance is really &quot;per 3-4 encounter balance&quot; and essentially becomes a weird kind of per-encounter balancing. Unless the DM enforces story-based balance on top of that in order to make the &quot;day&quot; relevant. Therefore, to me it makes more sense to just make the balance explicitly or implicitly &quot;per encounter&quot; and let the DM institute the level of story-based balance he wants in his campaign. Personally, I prefer the implicit balance of actions needed to ramp up abilities over the straight &quot;suite of powers&quot; approach. However, I can understand the dramatic, cinematic, and story virtues of making a character use different abilities in an encounter, rather than just firing off the same one over and over again. So I voted for both explicit and implicit encounter-based balance, although I have a slight preference for the latter over the former.There is story-related (or narrative) balance that should exist to control story-disrupting powers. But that's really about narrative control rather than game balance. And shouldn't be confused with it (even though it is in the current system).The current system tries to cover both forms of balance with its per day mechanics and spells prepared/known systems. As a result, it ends up doing, IMO, a piss poor job of both mechanical game balance and narrative story balance. It is my hope that the good folks at WotC realize this and intend to fix it.Per encounter balance doesn't necessarily make for a &quot;wahoo&quot; game. If you think that, I submit that it's probably because you believe that many of D&amp;D's design decisions are set in stone and can't be changed. They can.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="JohnSnow, post: 3495151, member: 32164"] Over my years of gaming, I have come to the conclusion that any form of "balance" other than "per encounter" is a fantasy. Per encounter balance, implicit or explicit, is the only form of balance that means anything mechanically. And that's what we're talking about - mechanical (or game) balance. So called "per day" balancing just leads to artificially short "days" as characters stop adventuring at 10 or 11 in the morning. Some day. So in other words, in my experience, "per day" balance is really "per 3-4 encounter balance" and essentially becomes a weird kind of per-encounter balancing. Unless the DM enforces story-based balance on top of that in order to make the "day" relevant. Therefore, to me it makes more sense to just make the balance explicitly or implicitly "per encounter" and let the DM institute the level of story-based balance he wants in his campaign. Personally, I prefer the implicit balance of actions needed to ramp up abilities over the straight "suite of powers" approach. However, I can understand the dramatic, cinematic, and story virtues of making a character use different abilities in an encounter, rather than just firing off the same one over and over again. So I voted for both explicit and implicit encounter-based balance, although I have a slight preference for the latter over the former. There is story-related (or narrative) balance that should exist to control story-disrupting powers. But that's really about narrative control rather than game balance. And shouldn't be confused with it (even though it is in the current system). The current system tries to cover both forms of balance with its per day mechanics and spells prepared/known systems. As a result, it ends up doing, IMO, a piss poor job of both mechanical game balance and narrative story balance. It is my hope that the good folks at WotC realize this and intend to fix it. Per encounter balance doesn't necessarily make for a "wahoo" game. If you think that, I submit that it's probably because you believe that many of D&D's design decisions are set in stone and can't be changed. They can. [/QUOTE]

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